


ashes

by ndnickerson



Category: Nancy Drew - Carolyn Keene
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Ficlet, Romance, Secret Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-04
Packaged: 2018-10-18 15:35:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10619907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: One day all this will end.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published at my Nancy Drew fic tumblr, nancydrewdiary.

They are married but no paper bears witness or proof, not anymore. They had to burn it, and then she drew her fingertip through the ashes, as though it could be so easy.

They are married and Nancy cannot be with Ned, because it would put his life in danger. Because she no longer exists. Because it is foolish and  _stupid_ and the way she loves him is reckless and it leaves her vulnerable.

It’s everything. It’s the kind of love that spans fields choked with dead, bloodshed and poetry and still silver moonlight. He is all she has left and he comes to her like a sleepwalker, drunk and enthralled, heedless of what might be done to him if they find out. She knows what can happen and she can speak none of it; sometimes she just clings to him in the dark and her heart rises until it chokes her and she catalogues it all, all the ways they could bloody and bruise and break him in an effort to break  _her_ , and yet, and yet.

And yet he is all that keeps her who she was. She would be nameless. She would be perfect, save for him.

She is broken without him.

He memorizes the signs and countersigns; he makes the brush passes and every rendezvous and they meet in safe houses, in shabby hotel rooms, in remote cabins. She picks him up in bars. Once, he bought her on a streetcorner, leaning across to open the passenger door, gazing at her, fingers curled in welcome. They never wear their wedding bands long enough for that strip of skin at the base of their fingers to ever turn.

But those are the only times she is alive.

They don’t fight, except when the last seconds are draining away and they are both clawing for the last dregs. They stroll in parks, faces averted; they eat in kitchens, standing up, fingers stained with sauce, and they never,  _never_ have enough time.

The nights, the slow mornings they spend wrapped around each other, as though contact will make the hurt less when it only seems to do the opposite. Her skin crawls when it isn’t in contact with his. She grows restless when they go weeks without seeing each other, as though she is slowly losing her orbit, slowly losing grip of this lie, the next lie, the next.

One day there will be a name and it will be the last. One day there will be another bitter crime scene, another weighted coffin lowered into the ground, another legend. One day there will be another signed witness and their newest names, empty identities linked by weighted words. One day he will slide her ring onto her finger again and it will never, never come off.

Until then, she looks up at the stars and thinks that at least they can touch him even when she can’t. She sleeps with her hand on her gun, her rest so brittle it breaks with the scrape of a tree branch against a window, leaving her jittery and half-crazed, and her waking life is a dream that will soon evaporate.

Until him. Until the day she walks away from all this and into his arms, forever.


End file.
